Descending Stories

When the narrator returns to the inn, he finds that the girls have left. He asks the innkeeper about his parents, and the innkeeper tells him that his father loves the rakugo, but that his mother has told him that it is not a living wage. The narrator tells the innkeeper that he is making money by selling food for his father, and that he will return to Tokyo to perform the zakugo. The innkeeper tells the narrator that he has to save money for the train, and he asks if he will put on a show for the girls at his inn. He says that he would have been ready to "tling on" him the day they met, but now he is doing the work of everyone else, not of a man. He thinks that it would be easier for her to leave plain if she were older